The role of sender credibility in migration information campaigns

Abstract

The actors who carry out migration information campaigns—and thus serve as ‘information senders’—vary greatly. Existing studies on the effectiveness of such campaigns typically focus on one case of an information campaign. It is difficult to compare these case studies because, in addition to the different implementing actors, they differ substantially in terms of the content conveyed and the ways they are carried out. As a result, evidence of the causal effect of the information senders is missing. I argue that who implements the campaign is not trivial, as each type of information sender may be associated with a different level of credibility, and psychological models of information processing suggest that a senders' credibility is key to the impact of information. To corroborate and complement existing research, I present findings from a longitudinal survey experiment in Nigeria among students who were presented with the same hypothetical information campaign while the information sender was varied: each an international and local NGO, government and social contact. The results show overall similar effect directions for the different information senders, namely an increase in awareness of the campaign topic of irregular migration and a reduction of (irregular) migration intentions among the participants. However, notable differences are observed in effect size and effect persistence per sender and opposing actors are most influential regarding general versus irregular migration. Descriptive mediation analyses support the relevance of credibility per sender and imply the existence of a topic-dependent sender credibility effect.